Choice Creates Social Hierarchy
On Costco's New Food Pickup System
Costco has a new system for picking up food at its popular in-store cafes. If you are a veteran Costco member, you’ve seen the new yellow-striped pickup lane in front of the old steel counter. The yellow lane has replaced the ‘ancient ritual’ of nervously listening for your ticket number while salivating and standing amidst the tarmac-like din of the world’s busiest warehouse stores.
There are now two ways to get food at Costco, whereas there used to be only one. Where there was no choice, now there is a choice. Ah, yes, so American indeed. A behavioral choice must lead to better things, right? Sigh.
Until 2024, when you wanted Costcos’ famous cafe food, you walked up to one of the registers arrayed on a polished steel countertop, paid via credit, debit, or cash, took a numbered receipt, stepped back, waited for the Hallowed Numerical Call-Out, and then approached the counter again to receive your food and beverage items. There were four to five registers and, therefore, four to five ordering lines during busy times of day (like Saturday at 1 p.m.).
There was something thrilling about being reduced to a three-digit number in an anonymous crowd. Only you secretly knew the ultimate meaning behind “457” or “723”… all of its life secrets, strengths and weaknesses, defects and virtues, preference for cats vs. dogs.
And no one behind the counter cared who you were. You were deliciously, silently anonymous as you were in no other retail interaction. Even the McDonald’s drive-through was more personable and intimate.
Yes, Costco food courts were open to the general public until recently. You didn’t have to be a member to join the fun. Many cafes are adjacent to the entrance and NOT inside the store, beckoning the public to swing by for an impulsive bite.1
During the pandemic, Costco’s famous $1.50 foot-long frankfurter replaced many a fast food meal. Actually, using Costco as a fast food joint had been going on for years, especially for parents with rug rats doing errands around town, before e-commerce heaven arrived.
Do we need anything in the store?
Nope, just the dogs!
However, Costco’s Hot Dog public commons and its rigid liturgy did not guarantee you would be served in numerical order. Oh no, this was never the supermarket deli counter, people. Who knows when “737” will get its food? It was anyone’s guess. So, you stood there, anxiously awaiting your Hallowed Numerical Call-Out, hoping your order was worthy of expedited assistance because your two-year-old just shat his pants, and you really need to get back to the car, whip open the rear door and execute a Seal Team Six diaper change before losing your appetite entirely (or strangling your husband who stands there oblivious).
Not that I took any of the anxious waiting personally, Lord Costco. Oh, never. I am forever unworthy to register a complaint at the greasy altar of Costco edibles.
Then, sometime in 2018, Costco began beta-testing digital food orderings kiosks at Seattle-area warehouses. Our family lived there then, so I saw them early on. But I never used them. Why? One more way to catch the flu or Noro. Um, no.
The kiosks were supposed to smooth out the ordering lines by letting you bypass them, but it wasn’t that popular initially. I guess we liked presenting our orders in person to the thoroughly uninterested cafe employees. Then, COVID-19 hit and delayed kiosk adoption even more. Get ill from the touch kiosk and then still wait for your number to be called out in the amorphous, lurking crowd of salivating people. Why?
However, as of this Spring, Lord Costco ended the edibles liturgy: both the number calling and the mysterious waiting period.
The cash registers vanished from the steel counter.
Solo ordering and payment now happen at the kiosks.
Then, members wind through the yellow-striped, first-come, first-serve pickup lane.
Except for…wait…what’s that on the right-hand side?
There is one lonely cash register on the right-hand side of the old steel counters. You won’t likely find anyone standing there because everyone behind the counter is busy filling orders for the numberless first-come, first-serve orders in the yellow lane.
Gone is the chaotic horde of carts and salivating dudes waiting for the number to be called out. The mystery. The nervous, giddy waiting. The anxious crowding.
Ooh, I might be next!
“757!”
“YES!!!”
No more of that.
Now you have a sad cross between a bank teller line from the 1980s and a Disney ride queue…And your cart won’t fit in it. So, if you’re alone, you’ll have to abandon your cart somewhere nearby and get in the yellow line. That’s $200-500 in paid merchandise sitting there as a test of member trust.
Hey, do they really prevent the public from coming in now? Are you sure it works? Can I lock the wheels?
But wait….what is up with the lonely cash register with no line in front of it? Why leave a cash register, if we’re supposed to order at the Covid-smothered touch kiosks?
And why is there a separate, very straight line to that lonely register?
If you pay in cash, folks, you can skip the disease-spreading touch kiosks AND the winding bank teller line.
You get to cut. Like any good ‘internet hustling bro’ would do.
But only if you pay in cash.
Of course, virtually no one inside a Costco carries ANY cash anymore.
The amorphous horde waiting for its Hallowed Number to be called out has morphed into two hierarchically arranged castes.
One is for the card-dependent masses who can’t plan anything ahead of time. The other is for savvy, cash-retro members who most likely planned ahead. They knew they’d get food on their Costco run and brought their cash.
Costco has created a behavioral social hierarchy between:
those who buy on impulse (most of us, let’s be real)
and those who come to Costco knowing they will take communion with the Sacred Frankfurter. The true devotees.
Now, there is an ultra-fast, savvy, scrappy way to get your Costco edibles and a chump way. And, like good Americans, we honor the separation because it’s earned by pre-meditated behavior.
Hey, they planned ahead and brought cash. Good for them!
Just bring cash on your next Costco trip, folks…
Stop acquiring the flu at the kioks and standing in the silly yellow line for chumps.
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Costco usually prevents the public, anyone, from entering the ‘exit’ lane and heading to an indoor cafe. They have receipt checkers who re-direct people to the ‘entrance’ side. Now, Costco has installed membership card scanners, replacing the manual scanning of cards that members used to flash at employees with hand clickers.
Not a Costco shopper, but they boast the lowest theft rate of all retail outlets. Soon "memberships" or ID's will required for entrance to all stores and malls.
I thought the law required Costco to let medicines, liquor and restaurant food (those hotdogs) be available for purchase to anyone, no membership required. I don’t buy liquor at Costco but the pharmacy and the restaurant don’t scan my membership card when I pay.